Solovyov and Larionov

March 1, 2019

With the same dramatic sweep as the 1400s-set Laurus and the 20th-century-spanning The Aviator, the multi-award-winning Vodolazkin's first novel--and third to be translated into English--takes us on a hunt with young scholar Solovyov as he travels to St. Petersburg and thence the Crimea to determine why White Russian general Larionov was not executed by the Bolsheviks after the revolution. The opening pages have the starchy, detail-obsessed quality of Solovyov himself, but once Solovyov arrives in Yalta and meets Zoya, the illegitimate daughter of a woman who tended Larionov in his later days, the story soars. Zoya shakes up our young hero, helping him steal valuable manuscript pages and introducing him to others dedicated to Larionov's memory, as the narrative weaves through time to discover Larionov's life and final fate. VERDICT Ultimately absorbing, darkly witty, history-soaked pages for literary and historical fiction fans.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2019
No matter what a person studies, he is studying himself, says Russian historian Solovyov, who is researching General Larionov, a White Russian who mysteriously survived the Bolshevik revolution. Historians have theorized that Larionov bribed the Bolsheviks or bartered with military secrets, but none has found evidence proving why he was spared. Solovyov seeks answers in Yalta, the general's postwar residence, and falls under the spell of Zoya, the daughter of Larionov's last assistant. Lured by the promise of obtaining Larionov's lost memoirs, Solovyov and Zoya stage a series of burglaries. But, when Solovyov finally meets the woman who cared for General Larionov in his final years, he learns that the answers he's seeking are tied to his own past in the tiny outpost Kilometer 715 and to Leeza Larionova, the girl he left behind. Third-person narration, circular structure, and archetypal characters lend this beautifully written literary mystery the feel of a modern fable. Recommend Vodolazkin's slowly unfolding story to readers who prefer detailed research, artfully layered descriptions, and character epiphanies to thrills.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2019
This debut novel from Russian writer Vodolazkin (but his third to be translated into English; The Aviator, 2018, etc.) is an odd, often likable m�lange: part academic satire, part military history, part philosophical meditation, part detective tale, part rollicking caper.Solovyov is a young academic who grew up at Kilometer 715, a railroad stop so obscure that it wasn't even a backwater--call it a back-no-water. When he makes his way to St. Petersburg to begin an academic career, he's assigned as his thesis topic a legendary general named Larionov--a fierce defender of the old regime who somehow, after the Revolution, not only kept his life and liberty but thrived in the new Soviet Union, living out his days on the beach at Yalta with the benefit of a pension. To solve this mystery, the dogged Solovyov strikes out for Crimea, where he falls in the path and under the sway of the lovely Zoya, an employee at the Chekhov Museum whose mother was the general's attendant late in life. Zoya sweeps him into various intrigues and adventures as he tries to unearth the general's elusive diary. Eventually Solovyov achieves escape velocity from Zoya and leaves Yalta, first for an academic conference on the general and then, acting on information he receives there, back home at the nearly abandoned Kilometer 715. The pace lags occasionally, and the hundred kinds of complication can seem excessive or indulgent, but there is sprightly, funny satire here and, beneath it, a surprising vein of poignancy.A busy but intriguing hybrid of a novel.

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